My, my, my, so many things happening and so many documents being released, all at once: the five-year development plan is now being discussed, the “Interim review of gaming liberalisation for games of fortune” (love the official catchy title!) is being scrutinised and of course the “Revision of the electoral law for the Legislative Assembly” proposal is being opened to consultation — wide and large. Out of consideration for the publisher of this newspaper, I’ll mainly focus on the latter, but let me just ponder for a line (or twenty) on the two other monuments of scientific policy-making at hand.
We have known about the 13th national five-year plan and roughly how it would translate for Macao at least since last November. We heard again about this plan in March, right after Mr Chui’s return from attending the “two meetings” in Beijing. I even wrote a column about it, stressing that “inclusiveness” and “greening”, two of the five key-concepts of the plan had been cast aside for no good reason. Now, I can see that these core ideas have been re-introduced, and yet the lack of specifics, the disrespect for pre-existing and drawn-up schemes (most of them with the year 2020 as their horizon), and the absence of well-defined targets (with numbers!), both intermediate and final, are simply beyond my understanding. Or wait!?! Could it be that the lessons from the total failure of the “General Policy on Traffic and Land Transportation in Macao (2010-2020)” are finally sinking in? Better not have specific target figures with a clear schedule and intermediate stages, otherwise we will have to show the world (or at least our community) that in lieu of science we bring delays, constant revisions and ultimately pointlessness to the entire plan. Adding the imperative of building a “smart city” to the whole enterprise won’t change a dime: in order to have what can be called a city, you need a master urban plan, and for that city to be smart, you need innovative and independent people to run the show freely from vested interests.
Now, looking at the interim review: well, let’s just say that the concessionnaires are credited for having by and large fulfilled all their contractual and operational duties. The positive impact far outweighs the negative downsides, and slightly muscling the “regulatory effort” will unmistakably allow for “a healthy and orderly development of the industry.” Well, if it had not been for Beijing’s new normal and sweeping fight against corruption, the deleterious explosion of junket operations would have never been reined in.
In November 2015, the DICJ was still talking of a simple “code of ethics” for gaming promoters, just like for pharmacists, doctors, lawyers and journalists! Did not I read somewhere that VIP rooms are the place where money-laundering takes (took…) place? Nobody will deny the astounding changes the liberalised gaming industry has brought to Macao: its colossal success has somehow brought pride to the sleeping beauty of the East, but, was it achieved evenly and for the benefit of all? Just like Archimedes’ principle, adverse forces tend to equal favourable ones, despite being different both in scope and nature — overpopulation, traffic congestion, domestic violence, family dysfunction, etc. And then, “tourism and recreation” were the chosen paths inscribed in article 118 of the Basic Law, not gambling, gambling and possibly gambling. Ultimately, making it straightforward and official, right from the start, that this interim review will not count in the 2020/2022 concessionaires renewal process might not be the best of ideas while we are still contemplating the fragile early stages of a long overdue drive towards diversification!
Blimey! No more space for Mrs Sonia Chan’s ambitious plan to reform the legislature’s electoral law! To be honest? Never mind: just like for the 2012 “+2+2+100” missed opportunity at real political reform, the proposal is overly modest and fails to address the core issues — a law on political parties could have been a start. Some people still think that the engine just needs a paint-job: wait until it stops!
Published in Macau Daily Times, May 20th 2016
Friday, May 20, 2016
Friday, May 06, 2016
Kapok: Impotence in politics
Several reasons can explain why many governments around the world, in democratic or partially democratic and at least liberal settings, have become impotent, incapable of solving clearly identified issues and designing ill-suited public policies resulting from compromises that ultimately satisfy nobody.
When the blame is put on outside forces, globalisation often becomes the big villain and supra-national entities, the United Nations and the WTO worldwide or the European Union institutions on a regional scale, are common embodiments of this wicked and not-so-distant influence.
When the ailment appears to be coming from within, then the elites and especially political elites are being held responsible: alleged deadlocks and deficiencies originate from the excess of institutionalisation of traditional political organisations and the overly intimate relations between stakeholders, be them in the political, economic, social or cultural spheres. Innovation is thus constantly frustrated and conflicts of interests grow on the back of an overall sense of unaccountability and impunity.
What often tie all these together is a perceived submission to the unrestricted and nefarious forces of the “free-market”, and henceforth the dominant position that self-centred corporations tend to acquire in polities. In a nutshell, governments and their ability to act fall victim of constraints coming from all sides: the sense of what makes a community holds together is being challenged persistently, hence the discomfort felt regarding the authenticity and logic of established forms of representativity.
Symptoms of this defiance towards traditional and “representative” politics, whatever its arrangements, are aplenty. In 2011, we had the Geração à Rasca (struggling generation) movement in Portugal and the Indignants in Spain. Later in the year, there was the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States, with its inspiration admittedly coming from the massive occupation of the Puerta del Sol.
Closer to us, we had the Sunflower student movement in Taiwan in 2014 — a distant echo of the Wild Lily student movement of 1990 — that ultimately led to the occupation of the Legislative Yuan on March 18. In Macao, we had the short-lived Anti-Compensation movement of May 25 and 27 of the same year that eventually forced the government to back down on an overly generous perks bill tailor-made for its soon-to-be retiring senior officials. In Hong Kong, the Occupy Central movement transformed into a city-wide Umbrella movement in late autumn 2014 and led to the youthful and politically boisterous occupation of several key parts of the city for more than two months.
In my home country, the birthplace of revolutionary movements that led to the demise of the “old regime”, to paraphrase Tocqueville, we have had the “Nuit debout” (literally “Night, Standing Up”) on the place de la République for about a month now. Beside the baroque mix of denunciations taking aim at such varied issues as "‘speciesism’, multinational corporations, capitalism, G.M.O.s, the police and nuclear power", the motivations are the same: letting go with worn out traditional forms of representation — individuals are to be trusted more than groups — and founding a new political culture — beyond the left and right devide, with the possibility to express oneself at any time, with the recognition that an individual is as much a citizen as he or she is a consumer and resolutely grounded in digital networks. In the end, these movements want to reconcile the apparent antagonism between “making society” — binding together — and respecting the singularity of each and every individual, without having to subsume under a collective identity.
In Macao, the clothes of the emperor are wearing out. Beyond the issue of legality — tax evasion is not, tax optimisation supposedly is — the Panama Papers question the exemplarity and trustworthiness of the ones in power: how can a personality holding an official mandate lie about his assets to a court of justice? How can an official serving in the CPPCC or NPC hold concurrent nationalities, be them Singaporean, American, Australian, Canadian, British or Portuguese? How can a supposed Beijing loyalist give lessons in patriotism while cultivating back door escape routes only available to the happy few? Are these “persons representative of various strata and sectors of society” really so?
Published in Macau Daily Times on May 6 2016
When the blame is put on outside forces, globalisation often becomes the big villain and supra-national entities, the United Nations and the WTO worldwide or the European Union institutions on a regional scale, are common embodiments of this wicked and not-so-distant influence.
When the ailment appears to be coming from within, then the elites and especially political elites are being held responsible: alleged deadlocks and deficiencies originate from the excess of institutionalisation of traditional political organisations and the overly intimate relations between stakeholders, be them in the political, economic, social or cultural spheres. Innovation is thus constantly frustrated and conflicts of interests grow on the back of an overall sense of unaccountability and impunity.
What often tie all these together is a perceived submission to the unrestricted and nefarious forces of the “free-market”, and henceforth the dominant position that self-centred corporations tend to acquire in polities. In a nutshell, governments and their ability to act fall victim of constraints coming from all sides: the sense of what makes a community holds together is being challenged persistently, hence the discomfort felt regarding the authenticity and logic of established forms of representativity.
Symptoms of this defiance towards traditional and “representative” politics, whatever its arrangements, are aplenty. In 2011, we had the Geração à Rasca (struggling generation) movement in Portugal and the Indignants in Spain. Later in the year, there was the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States, with its inspiration admittedly coming from the massive occupation of the Puerta del Sol.
Closer to us, we had the Sunflower student movement in Taiwan in 2014 — a distant echo of the Wild Lily student movement of 1990 — that ultimately led to the occupation of the Legislative Yuan on March 18. In Macao, we had the short-lived Anti-Compensation movement of May 25 and 27 of the same year that eventually forced the government to back down on an overly generous perks bill tailor-made for its soon-to-be retiring senior officials. In Hong Kong, the Occupy Central movement transformed into a city-wide Umbrella movement in late autumn 2014 and led to the youthful and politically boisterous occupation of several key parts of the city for more than two months.
In my home country, the birthplace of revolutionary movements that led to the demise of the “old regime”, to paraphrase Tocqueville, we have had the “Nuit debout” (literally “Night, Standing Up”) on the place de la République for about a month now. Beside the baroque mix of denunciations taking aim at such varied issues as "‘speciesism’, multinational corporations, capitalism, G.M.O.s, the police and nuclear power", the motivations are the same: letting go with worn out traditional forms of representation — individuals are to be trusted more than groups — and founding a new political culture — beyond the left and right devide, with the possibility to express oneself at any time, with the recognition that an individual is as much a citizen as he or she is a consumer and resolutely grounded in digital networks. In the end, these movements want to reconcile the apparent antagonism between “making society” — binding together — and respecting the singularity of each and every individual, without having to subsume under a collective identity.
In Macao, the clothes of the emperor are wearing out. Beyond the issue of legality — tax evasion is not, tax optimisation supposedly is — the Panama Papers question the exemplarity and trustworthiness of the ones in power: how can a personality holding an official mandate lie about his assets to a court of justice? How can an official serving in the CPPCC or NPC hold concurrent nationalities, be them Singaporean, American, Australian, Canadian, British or Portuguese? How can a supposed Beijing loyalist give lessons in patriotism while cultivating back door escape routes only available to the happy few? Are these “persons representative of various strata and sectors of society” really so?
Published in Macau Daily Times on May 6 2016
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